Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

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PaulDavisThe1st

I live in a small village of 250 people in rural New Mexico, 25 miles from the nearest town. To get to almost anywhere I have to drive. When I socialize, it is mostly with neighbors or people on hiking trails. I have a large set of tools out back and space to use them.

Don't assume that my preferences are so different from yours (though your use of "the tube" suggests that you're located in SE England, so many things may be different).

My point was that all the preferences you expressed come with a cost, not only to you, but to everything and everyone else as well. Talking about these things as if they are merely personal choices is misleading, they are actually personal choices that, in aggregate, shape the world we all get to live in. And the specific set of choices that you listed, for the most part, in aggregate, have a negative impact on the world. I'm a participant in that too, clearly.

I disagree that these things have a negative impact on the world when you or I do them.

I think that if billions of people do them, we have issues, sure.

But there is a finite carrying capacity regardless of what we do.

We could live plugged in like the Matrix and there would still be an upper bound somewhere.

It is patently nonsensical to take the behaviour of one person or even a million people, scale it to 8 billion, and then claim that it's unsustainable as a result.

We have plenty of mechanisms to prevent that from happening. One obvious one is that, as a Brit, I'm legally not permitted to move to the US and live in the same way that someone in Arizona does, which puts a cap on my lifestyle. Most people are in situations like that - ever heard of the "golden billion"?

Kind of amusing, then, that I'm a Brit :)

What brought you all the way from the UK to rural New Mexico?

Nothing like that direct. I've lived in Seattle and Philadelphia before this. The rest of my history is easily discoverable online if you're really interested. Basically, my wife and I really like our house and the region where we live.

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